Can Ladies Kill?, page 5
“We go around an’ we stick down that side street, near the entrance of the Sir Francis Drake Hotel, an’ when you go up to the Lee Sam house, one of these guys says he reckons you’ll come out the same way as you went in, so we wait down the street round a corner. But they leave one of these fellers opposite the house so’s he can signal when you come out.
“O.K. When he sees you come out this feller runs back to the Chevrolet an’ gets in. They go after you an’ they put on that shootin’ act, an’ they thought they’d got you. That’s all I know, an’ believe it or not it’s the truth.”
“O.K. sister,” I tell her, “I believe you. Why shouldn’t I? But you tell me somethin’. Where do I find this side-kicker of yours, this Mitzler guy?”
“He’s around,” she says. “We live in a dump off California; he’ll be there now.”
I ask her for the number of this house an’ she gives it to me.
“All right, sweetheart,” I say, “maybe I’ll go an’ see this friend of yours.”
“Just a minute,” she says, “there’s one little thing I’d like to tell you. Maybe if you get around to Mitzler’s place you might get sorta tough with him; you might make him talk, see? O.K. Well, what’s goin’ to happen to me. Don’t you think that these guys who tried to get you will get after me pretty good an’ quick?”
She looks at me sorta pathetic.
“I reckon they’ll make me look like mincemeat in twenty-four hours,” she said. “That’s what I’m goin’ to get for talkin’ to you.”
“It just shows you, kid, don’t it?” I say. “You should always keep good company, an’ not get mixed up with mobsters. Anyhow,” I go on, “I’ve gotta idea about you. Let’s get goin’.”
I pay the check an’ we go outside. We wait around there for two three minutes until a cab comes up.
“Listen, baby,” I say.
I look at my watch. It is four fifteen.
“Me—I’m goin’ around to see this friend of yours, this Joe Mitzler, an’ maybe you’re right when you think that these bozos will get out after you if they think that it was you that spilled the beans to me, so I’ve got a big idea.”
I feel in my pocket. I take out my roll an’ peel off five five-dollar bills.
“Here you are, baby,” I tell her. “Here’s a quarter of a century for you. Now take my tip. You get down to the bus stop an’ buy yourself a nice ticket that’s goin’ to get you way outa San Francisco before these guys start lookin’ for you. I reckon you’ve got enough dough to get out an’ to keep goin’ for a bit.”
“Say, mister,” she says, “are you swell? I bet there ain’t many coppers would do a thing like this. I think you’re tops.”
I grin at her. “That’s O.K. by me,” I say. “Maybe I’m a little angel but people don’t know it. So long, blondie.”
I get inta the cab an’ tell the guy to drive to California Street, but when he has got round the corner I tell him to stop. I tell him to wait until this dame has passed the end of the street, to let her get well ahead an’ then follow quietly after her. Me—I know dames. From the side street I can see blondie walkin’ along but she ain’t walkin’ towards the bus stop. Two three minutes afterwards a cab comes along an’ she signals it. She gets in an’ the cab goes off.
“After that cab,” I tell the driver, “an’ don’t lose it.”
We drive for about five minutes an’ we don’t go to no bus stop. Finally I see her get outa the cab at the end of some alley down near the Embarcadero, an’ it looks to me like she has driven all round the place to get there.
I get outa my cab an’ tell the driver to wait, an’ I go after her. She turns down the alley an’ she walks along till she comes to some dump that looks like a Chinese flop shop. She goes inta a door at the side. When I get to the door I give it a push. It ain’t locked an’ I go in. In front of me is a dark flight of stairs. I go up, an’ see that there is a long dirty passage in front of me. At the end of the passage I can see a crack of light comin’ from under a door. I gumshoe along the passage an’ listen. Inside I can hear the dame talkin’ to some guy. I kick the door open. The room is a dirty sorta place with a truckle bed in the corner.
Lyin’ on the bed is a guy, a big guy with a face that looks as if it’s been in contact with a steam roller some time. Standin’ in the middle of the floor with her back to me, her hands on her hips talkin’ to him good an’ plenty is Blondie. She spins around as I come in.
“Well, I’ll be sugared,” she says.
“You bet you will be, baby,” I tell her. “You didn’t think I was goin’ to fall for any of that punk stuff you told me about where your friend Mitzler lives, didya? An’,” I go on, “I bet you were givin’ me a big horse laugh when I gave you the twenty-five bucks to get outa San Francisco so’s somebody wouldn’t shoot you up, eh? Listen, Toots,” I tell her, “what do you think I am? Have a heart.”
I turn to the guy on the bed.
“An’ this is Joe Mitzler,” I say, “the guy who was supposed to live in California Street.”
“What the hell?” he says. “Who in hell are you an’ what do you want?”
“Pipe down, angel face,” I tell him. “I’ll get round to you in a minute.”
I hold out my hand.
“Just slip back that twenty-five bucks, will you?” I tell her, “less the cab fare around here.”
She pulls a face but she hands back the twenty.
“Now look. Toots,” I tell her. “Scram outa here an’ keep goin’ because to-morrow mornin’ we’ll have your description out an’ if you are around San Francisco I’ll have you pinched, see? So long, sister.”
She gives me a look like a snake an’ she scrams.
I light a cigarette. “Well, Joe,” I tell him.
This guy heaves himself off the bed. He sits there with his hands hangin’ down in front of him. Lookin’ at this guy I get to think’ that whoever it was said that we was descended from gorillas musta had Joe in mind. I tell you his face was bust about plenty, an’ besides this he’s gotta couple old knife wounds in his neck, an’ where his shirt is hangin’ open I can see a bullet scar across his chest. I reckon Joe is plenty tough.
“What the hell?” he says. “What d’ya think you’re doin’ bustin’ around here? Who are you?”
“Didn’t blondie tell you anythin’ about me?” I ask him. “Now listen, Joe, my name’s Caution. I’m a Federal officer an’ I’m plenty interested in the fact that some guys around here have ironed out Mrs. Marella Thorensen to-night, after which they proceed to bust her face in with a chunk of ice, a business which I think was done for the purpose of gettin’ a bullet outa her skull.
“O.K. Well, when I go down to the morgue to have a look at this dame, blondie was doin’ a big look-out act outside. Later to-night some guys tried to rub me out. They got blondie along with ’em an’ I reckon she was there so that she could identify me. What do you know about it, Joe?”
He looks at me an’ he grins. When I said he looked like a gorilla I was insultin’ the gorilla. I never saw any animal look like this guy. When he opens his mouth to grin I see that all his teeth are broken an’ black an’ jagged.
“I don’t know nothin’,” he says.
He heaves himself up to his feet. “An’ what the hell, supposin’ I did? D’ya think I’d tell you, copper?”
“Look, Joe,” I tell him, “you’re goin’ to talk, see, because I wanta know.”
“Yeah,” he says, “blondie told me you gotta big idea about lockin’ her in the morgue till she came across. Well, that might be a swell idea with a dame, but it don’t go with me. Me—I ain’t afraid of corpses.”
I go over to him.
“Look, Joe,” I tell him. “Here’s the way it is.”
I pull back my right arm an’ I smack him across the jaw with my right elbow, bringin’ my wrist down as I do it. He goes back across the bed. Then he sits up again lookin’ at me, an’ I can see this job is goin’ to be plenty tough because I ain’t even hurt this guy. He sits there waitin’ for a minute, an’ then he takes a jump at me with his head down. I reckon if he’d hit me he’d have knocked my guts out, but he don’t, because I’ve seen this act comin’ an’ as he comes forward I bring my knee up an’ it connects with his face an’ this jolts him plenty. Before he can get his head up again I sock him alongside the jaw. He goes over.
I pull his head up while he is still on the floor an’ bang it back on the floorboards. He hits the floor with a noise that you coulda heard a block away, but this guy is still tough. He starts gettin’ up again. I have to hit him twice more an’ just to make certain of this job I pull the Luger an’ smack him one across the dome with the butt. He goes out.
I drag this guy on to the bed. In the corner on the wash-hand stand I find a bottle of water. I pour a little of this over his face. He starts comin’ round. Then he opens his eyes an’ looks at me an’ believe me he wasn’t sendin’ me no love messages neither.
“Look, Joe,” I say, “whether you like it or not you’re goin’ to talk. You ain’t feelin’ so well right now, an’ I don’t wanta get really busy with you. The last time I had a guy who was really tough an’ who wouldn’t talk, I had to persuade him by holdin’ my cigarette lighter between his fingers, right down under the soft skin between the knuckles. I believe it hurts plenty. Now you get a load of this, if you don’t talk. I’m goin’ to get tough. What are you goin’ to do?”
He struggles up an’ sticks his head back against the back of the bed. I reckon this guy has gotta headache.
“What the hell?” he says. “Me—I don’t know nothin’ about this business except there was fifty bucks in it for me, an’ I reckon like most other palookas I’m goin’ to do a lot for fifty bucks.”
He puts his hand out for the water bottle an’ I can see that he is runnin’ his tongue over his lips. I reckon this guy is thirsty. I hand him the water bottle, an’ as I do this he tries to swing me across the head with it. I’ve got an idea that he may be tryin’ something funny like this, so I bust him another one, knockin’ two of the remainin’ teeth that he has got down his throat. After he has managed to swallow these teeth successfully, we get back to business.
“I wouldn’t try anythin’ else, Joe,” I tell him.
“You’re tellin’ me,” he says. “I won’t. They was the only two good teeth I had. What I’m goin’ to do now for eatin’ purposes I don’t know.”
He starts talkin’. He tells me that he has had a ring through from a friend of his. This friend is a guy who works along at a dance joint in Chinatown. This guy tells Joe that blondie the girl has been doin’ a job of work for a friend of his, a guy by the name of Spigla, an’ that somebody has asked Spigla to send some boys out to give some other guy (meanin’ me) a good beatin’ up, an’ he reckons that blondie had better come along too for the purpose of pointin’ me out. He says that if Joe will fix this he is on fifty bucks.
“An’ that’s all I know,” he says, “an’ if I’d known that I was goin’ to get bust over the dome with a gun butt I’d have wanted seventy-five.”
“O.K. Joe,” I tell him, “an’ where does this guy Spigla hang out?”
He tells me that this guy Spigla is to be found hangin’ out at some joint called the Two Moons Club in Chinatown, that he is a very nice guy, an’ that he probably has not got anythin’ against me at all, but that he is the sorta guy who is always ready to take care of anybody for two three hundred bucks, an’ that probably somebody has paid him to get tough with me.
I take out my cigarette pack, give myself one an’ throw one over to him.
“Look, Joe,” I tell him. “Maybe that’s the truth, an’ maybe it ain’t. But I’m goin’ to give you a tip-off. For the sake of the argument, as the professors say, I’m goin’ to believe your story. But you take a tip from me an’ keep your nose clean from now on, because if there is any more nonsense from you or that blonde dame of yours I’m goin’ to make it plenty hot for you.
“You gotta realise that you two can be pulled in on an accessory charge to first degree murder. Well, I ain’t goin’ to do it because I think you are a pair of saps kickin’ around tryin’ to earn yourselves a few dollars. So just keep quiet an’ keep outa my way.”
“That’s O.K. by me,” he says. “Me—I’m through with this business.”
He rubs the top of his head.
“All right, Joe,” I tell him. “I think you’re the wise guy, an’ if you’re still wiser I reckon that you’re goin’ out right now to pick up that blonde jane of yours—because I reckon she is waitin’ just around the corner some place for you—an’ scram outa this man’s town, an’ if you wanta know why, I’m tellin’ you this:
“I got an idea that there’s goin’ to be plenty trouble for you an’ blondie if you stick here. The guys who wanted to rub me out to-night don’t seem to me to be very particular sorta fellers about what they do. I reckon they won’t be so pleased with you an’ blondie for sayin’ as much as you’ve said. Maybe they’ll call you a squealer an’ present you two with a few ounces of hot lead right in the place where you digest your dinner, see?”
He stretches himself an’ grins. “I reckon you’re right, stranger,” he says. “Me—I’m for the highway. This town looks to me like it is goin’ to get hot.”
“O.K. Joe.” I tell him. “So long.”
I scram. I go back to the Sir Francis Drake an’ go up to my room. On my dressin’ table is a note from O’Halloran, by which it looks as if he has been gettin’ a move on. The note says:
Dear Lemmy,—Your idea about contacting Nellie the cook was a good one. I sent a motor cycle cop out there to knock the dame up and she spills some interesting stuff. Such as:
That hand-printed note supposed to be from Marella about not being back until nine o’clock was a lot of boloney. Marella fired Nellie the cook this morning, the reason being that Marella was going to do her own cooking in the future and just have a hired girl in for a few hours a week.
The cop took Nellie back to the Villa Rosalito so’s she could look around and notice anything that was different. Well, Nellie says that nothing’s different. In fact she says that every article of Marella’s clothing is still there—there ain’t even a hat or a glove missing. Nellie knows all about Marella’s clothes.
This looks plenty screwy to me. It looks as if Marella never meant to leave that place to-night; that she meant to be there when you got there. It looks like somebody snatched this dame.
So get to work on that, muggsy!
So long,
Terry.
I take a shower an’ start undressin’. I smoke a cigarette an’ play with a few ideas. Here’s how they go:
1. Marella is waiting to see me when she gets a telephone call from somebody or other in the neighbourhood. This call is a phoney call for the purpose of getting her out of the way when I arrive.
2. I arrive at the Villa and take a look around and leave. Berenice Lee Sam arrives and waits. She waits because she knows about the phoney telephone call. She has seen me come out of the house and she watches me go. She knows that Marella will be back.
3. Marella comes back. Berenice says they should go upstairs to talk. On the way up the stairs she flips the telephone receiver off the hook so’s nobody can contact the house while she is there.
4. Marella talks and Berenice sees that she knows a durn sight too much about something or other.
5. Somebody (it might have been Berenice) grabs Marella, sticks her in a car and runs over to San Francisco and shoots her. They chuck her in the harbour.
6. They remember about the bullet and work the act with the ice.
7. They realise that they have made a mistake somewhere so they try to rub me out. I reckon they would not have tried to bump me if they hadn’t thought that I know something that I don’t know.
8. The story about these guys having followed me from the Sir Francis Drake up to the Lee Sam house is bunk. If the blonde dame had been telling the truth she would have said that they’d followed me up to Thorensen’s place first and then on to the Lee Sam house. She didn’t say this because they didn’t know I had been to Thorensen’s place because they wasn’t following me then.
9. They wasn’t following me because they didn’t know I was up there till I got to Lee Sam’s. Then somebody in the Lee Sam house saw me gumshoein’ about the place and put a call through to the gun boys in the car. They came up and stuck around until I left.
10. So it looks like I have to find the connection between the guy Spigla who was responsible for the attempted rubbing out of me, and Lee Sam or Berenice Lee Sam because it was somebody from that house who did the telephoning for the murder car.
11. It looks like Very Deep and Very Beautiful Stream is plenty deep. I must talk to this dame some more.
Chapter Four
THE SMART DOLL
At four o’clock in the afternoon I am still sleepin’ like a log, when a bell hop comes in, wakes me up an’ gives me a wire from headquarters at Washington.
I sit up in bed with this wire in my hand an’ I get a sorta feelin’ that the Director is goin’ to recall me because Marella havin’ been bumped the Federal Government has sorta lost interest in this business. I get a strange feelin’ of disappointment that I can’t quite work out. Then I bust open the envelope an’ I am very glad to find out that I am wrong. The wire says:
District Attorney San Francisco reports Mrs. Marella Thorensen murdered last night stop Chief of Police suggests motive was to prevent information regarding Federal offences reaching you stop He agrees investigation of death of Marella Thorensen and alleged Federal offences known to her be carried out by you stop Has appointed Police Captain Brendy Police Lieutenant O’Halloran to co-operate with you stop Necessary funds available at G office Kearney Street Director.
